


Special Effects

by f-ing-ruthless-baz (f_ing_ruthless_baz)



Series: Carry On Ficlets [5]
Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Accidental Kissing, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Actors, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Co-workers, Enemies to Lovers, Eyeliner, Ficlet, M/M, Makeup, POV Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-09-01 01:25:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20249863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/f_ing_ruthless_baz/pseuds/f-ing-ruthless-baz
Summary: Snow has been in charge of my makeup for over a year now, since our second series, and has annoyed me to no end right from the beginning. He’s always telling me what to do—lift my chin, close my eyes, turn this way, now that way—and refuses to give into my demands when I behave like an entitled prick. Plus, he’s constantly in my personal space, by the very nature of his job, and it drives me up the wall.On top of it all, he’s bloody gorgeous.At least I know he can’t stand me either.Baz plays a vampire on TV, which would be fine if he didn't have an embarrassing crush on the special effects makeup artist.





	Special Effects

**Author's Note:**

> Based on this prompt from a list: _An accidental brush of lips followed by a pause and going back for another, on purpose._
> 
> It's tricky to write a ficlet in an AU, because it's hard to establish backstory in so few words (at least for me), but I've been mulling on this prompt for a couple days and this idea just hit me this morning so I had to write it! I hope it works!
> 
> **Update 08/02/20:** I've written a bit of a prequel to this fic, [**It's Not What It Looks Like**](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25669975), about the time Simon and Baz first met.

I hate Vampire Day.

_Vampire Day_ is what I call any day where I have to shoot scenes in “vampire mode.” My character, _Acheron Bloodgood_—or _Ash_, for short—only appears fully as a vampire when he’s hunting or fighting or having sex—cue eye-roll. But this sort of thing usually only happens once or twice per episode, so most scenes require minimal makeup, on my part.

I hate spending time in Hair and Makeup. And Vampire Day is always the worst, because the special effects makeup takes so much longer. Which means more time spent with _him_—Simon Snow.

Snow has been in charge of my makeup for over a year now, since our second series, and has annoyed me to no end right from the beginning. He’s always telling me what to do—lift my chin, close my eyes, turn this way, now that way—and refuses to give into my demands when I behave like an entitled prick. Plus, he’s constantly in my personal space, by the very nature of his job, and it drives me up the wall.

On top of it all, he’s bloody gorgeous.

At least I know he can’t stand me either.

“Here,” he says as he hands me a set of contact lenses from a train case marked with my name. “Starting with the dark ones today, apparently.”

I take one lens out and lean in towards the vanity mirror so I can put it in. “Does that bother you, Snow?” I ask mockingly. We both know what the dark ones mean.

When Ash is hunting, his eyes are pale, making them more sensitive to light and able to see better in the dark—it’s bullshit, of course, but that’s television. When he’s fighting, they go red because he’s angry—as in _seeing red_. (Very original.) The dark lenses, however, are for a different kind of _vampire mode_.

Snow’s jaw tenses for a moment and he starts pulling out his supplies. “No. Why would that bother me?”

“Just making sure you’re alright,” I say once my contacts are both in place. “Wouldn’t want you getting upset over me having to do an _intimate_ scene with your ex-girlfriend, right?”

“It’s not _that_ intimate,” he mutters. “I read the script.”

“Partial nudity, though.”

“Yeah, _hers_. Not yours.”

I sit back in my seat and raise an eyebrow at him. “Isn’t that worse?”

“No—Er, well, I mean, yeah, but—Whatever, it’s fine!” He grabs the armrest of my chair and swivels me around to face him.

“Good, then. I know how much it used to make you uncomfortable while you two were still dating, so I’m glad to know you’re over it,” I say with a small smirk.

“Yeah. Looks like you won, anyway,” he says. He clips back the hair that’s fallen loose around my face to get it out of the way. “She’s all yours now.”

“Do you honestly think I’m interested in her that way?” I ask, and then close my eyes and mouth when he goes to spray something on my face. (Supposedly it helps the makeup adhere better. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if he does it just to piss me off.)

“Aren’t you?”

I tentatively open one eye to make sure he’s not about to spray me again, and then stare up at him with as much boredom as I can muster. “If I’d wanted to date her, you’d have never had a chance, Snow.”

“You mean because you’re tall and rich and _pretty_, and I’m just average?” he grumbles.

It shouldn’t make my stomach flutter when he does that. Calls me pretty. He obviously doesn’t mean it as a compliment. You don’t get to play a role like mine without being good-looking, and he probably thinks that’s the only job requirement. I should be insulted. I shouldn’t want to snog his lights out.

“You’re hardly average,” I say, though I realize after the fact that I sounded a little too sincere about that.

“Meaning?” he asks as he twists a black pencil liner through a sharpener with more force than necessary. He blows some excess shavings off the end.

“I just mean—” I stop when he bends forward to meet my eye level, pushing down on the armrests to hold himself up. He’s squinting at my face in a way that makes me feel oddly exposed, even though I know he’s just trying to figure out how much concealer he’ll need for the dark circles around my eyes. I don’t know where to look when he does this—but I know it shouldn’t be his lips. That doesn’t stop me, apparently. “—You’ve got your redeeming qualities, I’m sure.”

“You’re such an asshole,” he says with a defeated chuckle, turning back to the makeup laid out on the table next to him.

“Thank you.”

He purses his lips, like he’s trying not to smile, as he mixes the right shade for me in small sterile dish. He’s done it so many times, it just seems automatic to him. It’s sort of nice to watch him work like this, when he’s not staring right back at me. When I can just look all I want.

“Right. Close your eyes,” he says, leaning in again to paint on the concealer. He knows it makes me flinch to see a brush get that close to my eye, despite the fact that I know he’s not going to jab me with it. He’s far too professional for that, thankfully.

It’s a different story with the eyeliner, though, seeing as he has to get it right to the inner edge of my eyelid—the waterline, he calls it—and I have to keep my eyes open. It definitely makes me nervous.

“Okay, deep breath,” he says in a calm voice when he gets in close to line my eyes. He rests his pinky finger on my cheek to stabilize his hand, and loosely holds the opposite side of my head with his other one. Has to make sure I don’t jerk back unexpectedly. He’s actually rather accommodating of my needs when it comes to this—I know it’s because it would be a pain in the ass for him if I had a meltdown every time he did my eyeliner, but it’s still comforting.

I take a deep, steadying breath, like he said, and try not to focus on the fact that this gorgeous man, on whom I have an embarrassing crush, is just a few centimetres away, and prepared to stab my eye out if I make one wrong move.

“Look up for me,” he says, so softly it nearly sends a shiver up my spine. (I’ve gotten used to the feel of the pencil dragging along my lower lid, for the most part, but I don’t think I’ll ever get used his softness with me when he does it.)

He doesn’t draw attention to it, either. He doesn’t give me a condescending, _“That wasn’t so bad, now, was it, Basilton?”_ afterwards or anything. He just moves onto the next steps in the process.

It’s a long process, and I tend to run lines in my head while I wait for it all to be over. Today, however, it’s proving difficult, as Snow seems to be in higher spirits than usual. He’s humming quietly to himself, and while he can’t carry a tune to save his life, it’s painfully endearing. Sometimes his lips move a little, like he’s mouthing the words along to whatever song’s playing in his mind, completely unaware of himself. What an idiot.

I swear, I would kiss him, given half a chance.

“Hold on. Eyelash,” he says when he stops dabbing my face with a sponge all of a sudden, and lightly holds my head still with a finger hooked under my chin. He leans in even closer, zeroing in on the side of my face, but it doesn’t register to me what he’s doing until it’s too late.

I assume—after the fact—he was going to blow an eyelash off my face, but, in a moment of great confusion and intense stupidity, I turn my head towards him, and his lips accidentally brush mine.

We both pull back quickly, as the shock of the moment wears away and is replaced by a sense of nauseating humiliation—in my case, at least. He’s staring at me, wide-eyed, and I can’t seem to remember what words are. _Is there even a word that would make this better?_

I can’t tell if we’ve been gaping at each other for a second or an hour, but I’m determined not to let my treacherous eyes flick down to his mouth this time—that is, until I notice his flick down to mine. _What the_—

When his lips touch mine again, I don’t know what to think. This is no _accidental brush_; Simon Snow is straight-up kissing me. And I’m kissing him back.

It’s nothing like I imagined it would be like to kiss him—which I’ve imagined more times than I’d care to admit. I’ve always envisioned myself as the one who’d kiss him first, in my fantasies. I’d have to persuade him. Win him over. Earn his affection. Yet here he is, just giving it away.

I can’t say I’m complaining.

But just as suddenly as it started, he’s pulling back again—further back—looking as surprised as he did before.

“Shit, sorry,” he says, casting his eyes downward as they dart around in confusion. He runs a hand through his hair to tug on his curls.

“Simon—”

“Sorry, sorry, I didn’t—” He stands and takes a couple more steps back. “I don’t, um—I don’t do this. Sorry.”

The confusion in my gut makes way for resentment. “Don’t do what, Snow?” I sneer at him. “Kiss blokes?”

“Kiss people at work!” he says, gesturing with both arms. “_Shit_—”

I let out a scoff of incredulity. “What about Wellbelove?”

“We never did _that_!”

“Christ, Snow, your sex life is even more pathetic than I thought.”

“First of all,” he says, lunging towards me to get in my face again—though this time I suspect it’s not for a kiss—“I meant we never kissed _at work_. And second, why the _fuck_ would you be thinking about my sex life?”

Well, he’s got me there.

He runs both hands through his hair this time as he stands straighter, shuffling his feet back and forth. “This is the last thing I need,” he groans.

“You’re the one who kissed _me_, alright?” I say as I push myself out of my seat so I can tower over him—only by a few inches, but still.

“Yeah, but—” He freezes in place and glares up at me. “You did this on purpose, didn’t you? Now you have an excuse to get me sacked. I know you’ve wanted to be rid of me for ages.”

“Are you _really_ that thick?” I ask, unable to mask my disbelief. “You think I tricked you into kissing me so you’d get fired?”

“Maybe!”

“I’m the temperamental star of an award-winning TV series, you numpty; if I wanted you to get sacked, you’d already be sacked.”

“Then why do you do it?” he asks angrily. “The insults and the mockery and the flirting—”

“Excuse me?”

“—It’s like you’re trying to get me riled up in every way possible just—Just so I fuck up, like today!”

“That’s not why I do it,” I say, taking an aggressive step closer to him. He doesn’t back away.

“Then why—”

I grab him by the sides of his head and plant another kiss on him to shut him up.

His hands immediately come up and latch onto my arms, and I think he might push me away, but instead he digs his fingers in and pulls me closer. I don’t know why I ever thought kissing Simon Snow would be anything else—everything we do ends in an argument, so why should this be any different?

“Mm—Your makeup,” he says breathlessly between clashes of our mouths.

“What?” I ask, though I don’t relent.

“I didn’t. It’s not. Set. Yet.”

“Don’t care.”

“Fuck, Baz.” He laughs as he pushes me just out of reach of his lips. “You’re supposed to be on set soon and I’m not even done.”

“They can shoot the scene without me,” I joke, leaning in to steal another kiss.

He laughs again. “Look, maybe after we wrap tonight, we can go get a drink or something, yeah?”

“I suppose,” I say with a sigh, though I can’t keep myself from smiling. _How is this my life right now?_

“Right, then.” He guides me back towards my chair and rather gracelessly pushes me into it. “Now I have to touch up all the stuff I already did.”

I smirk at him. “My evil plan worked, then.”

He smiles reluctantly as he dispenses a bit more makeup into the dish, and then leans in close once more to dab it on my face. “You know,” he says, as I resist the urge to just have him right now, “it’s a good thing we hadn’t got the fangs in yet, huh?”

“Are you saying you don’t like the fangs, Snow?”

“Er, well, I didn’t say that…”

I arch an eyebrow and I swear he blushes a little. “Noted.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to know about my WIPs and other random, vaguely Carry On or fanfic-related things I like to talk about, you can find me on tumblr as [@f-ing-ruthless-baz](https://f-ing-ruthless-baz.tumblr.com)!


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